Network flow information (sometimes also referred to as Netflow) provides an indication of packet traffic traversing a particular interface or network device. This level of granularity is useful for some network management techniques such as interface utilization analysis or interface traffic monitoring. However, the network flow information fails to provide an indication of the amount of traffic traversing a subject network at a macro-level. The network flow information also fails to identify traffic patterns between external autonomous systems (AS's) that pass through the subject network.
Using previously known solutions, in order to provide macro-level inter-AS traffic relations, the network flow information for a window of time (e.g., on the order of approximately 20×106 data flows) is converted into inter-autonomous system (inter-AS) traffic information (e.g., on the order of approximately 3×106 inter-AS flows) using knowledge of the subject network and also knowledge of the external AS's connected to the subject network. The inter-AS traffic information characterizes data traffic between at least two external AS's that traverses the subject network.
A great amount of memory is used to store intermediate versions of the inter-AS traffic information while the network flow information is being processed. As the subject network grows so does the amount of network flow information collected from the subject network. In turn, the input for the conversion process grows thereby increasing the amount of memory used to produce the inter-AS traffic information, and as a result, the cost of the network management servers.
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